this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
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We spent decades depicting science fiction AIs as the key to giving humanity true freedom from mandatory labor, and now we're scared because it can do creative work too? We'll adapt. We'll be just fine. A new generation will crop up that will have no issues with AI-generated content. We're too old to see it like they will. Just like a lot of our parents and grandparents didn't understand email until they were forced to, while us kids were doing all kinds of things online.
I mean shoot, my parents still argue with me over whether electronic music is even music or not. It's just gonna be another tool in an artist's arsenal.
Very few people benefit from automation and AI. Most of us will eventually be replaced by an IA and our only freedom will be to starve (or to rebel, who knows)
People can and have made the same argument about new technology since the dawn of the industrial revolution, but it hasn't worked out that way. Industrialized countries are synonymous with rich countries. The problem with new technology, both now and then, it's that the ownership of the means of production always becomes concentrated in the hands of a small class of people who have no interest in sharing their wealth. This far the benefits of technology have trickled down to the masses, but never without hurting a bunch of people in the process precisely because a few people have been allowed to hoard most of the benefits for themselves.
Yes, I'm aware. And that's precisely capitalism's heart, which means that to change that we'd need to topple capitalism itself.
Maybe those stories never make it to the cinema but any time I see AI in a movie the humans do not come out on top.
Utopian science fiction is less popular, but look at Star Trek for example. Commander Data in The Next Generation and the EMH in Voyager provide invaluable help to the crews they work with. Or look at the robot in Interstellar for another example for a possibly portrayal of AI in a mostly dystopian setting. Even the droids in Star Wars would be impossible without very advanced AI (even if that fact isn't discussed in universe), and a great many droids are shown as being critical to the success of ventures they take part in.
I'll give you Star Trek but that's also a stretch because Earth essentially becomes a communist society, or at least a society that's no longer driven by wealth. Right now that seems more far-fetched than a self-aware digital lifeform.